GAPS Diet Chat and Support - Page 3 « Back to Group Discussions

[birdhappy85]

Abra, would you share more of your vast knowledge about how a mother's gut flora transfers to an infant's? I'm really interested in that and read a little more about it online but didn't quite understand how it happens. I'm feeling so fortunate that I was making such great strides improving my digestive health for months leading up to TTC Sora, and I didn't even know it would affect her own gut flora! I'm motivated to really do an overhaul before I conceive any more children in the future.

I don't know what is die-off, what is PMS, what is withdrawal from eliminated foods, or any of that anymore. I'm kind of frustrated today.  Mentally I've been feeling amazing, but physically I'm not feeling so great the past few days. I'm nauseous off and on, feel like sleeping a lot, and I can't control my body temperature. I've lost 6 lbs and planned to wait until I hit 20 or so before I get my thyroid checked again for a possible med adjustment (hypothyroid over here), but now that I'm having so much trouble with my body temp, maybe I should just set up an appointment sooner... I wonder if changing my diet so dramatically could've really affected my thyroid levels this quickly? All I know is it really really sucks. It could all just be menstrual-related, though. I never know what my body is going to do in any given month anymore. The baby broke me! lol

Random question -- Do you guys eat the marrow from the beef bones you use for broth?

[Jaimee]

So how bad is it if some errant cabbage floats to the top of your brine?  Fish it out?

[APToddlerMama]

Thanks for the info on fermenting! When you all make meat stock, do you scrape anything off the top? I used to scrape the "scum" off when I made soup but I don't even know what that nasty stuff is. Is it something we are supposed to be eating? You are all so positive about this diet and I wish I could be too but dealing with all these meat and fermentation issues are tripping me out. I need to get over it though because I'm 110% committed to doing this. Am I the only one this squeamish about this diet? Thanks in advance for the help .

[Jaimee]

If you were talking to a person for the first time about the GAPS diet, what one website or one book would you recommend they read first?

[LunaLady]

Well, if one is serious about wanting the full info on GAPS then Dr Natasha's book is pretty much all you need. There are not very many GAPS books.

And gapsdiet.com and gaps.me are the websites with good info.

[birdhappy85]

How important do you think it is that the beef bones I use for broth be organic/grassfed? I can see beef meat itself as being important but bone-wise would it be that big of a deal if they were just from the regular grocery store sometimes?

Has anyone here made broth with other bones besides chicken or beef? I'm curious how you'd go about it with fish...

I finally ordered Dr. Natasha's GAPS book, water kefir starter, and BioKult probiotics. They should arrive within the next few days! Yay!

[LunaLady]

Hey Joanie,

I'm of the opinion that it's pretty important.... 'conventional' beef and chicken were not fed a diet that those animals were designed to eat. Therefore, the entire animal (meat, organs, bones, etc) is going to be made up differently than if they had been allowed to eat a diet that they are naturally designed to eat. If you're buying any conventional meats or bones, you're basically buying GMO corn to eat, as that's what those animals have been fed for the vast majority of their lives.

Grass fed and organic animals will produce far superior products in terms of actually make-up: vitamins, minerals, fats (the actual fat profile is different!), protein, etc. 

For us, we only use organic/grass fed meats/bones/organs/etc. 

We order the majority of our meats from US Wellness meats. I think no one has any excuse not to get good quality meat with US Wellness around! They ship anywhere across the country! 

And their prices are better than our local Whole Foods Market. And it may be more expensive than conventional... but it's cheaper than cancer! Haha, that's my DH's canned response whenever anyone says organic food is expensive. 

I've made broth from chicken, beef, turkey and lamb. I haven't tried fish.

I'm excited for you to read the book, Joanie!

[LunaLady]

Oh, and I know I'm not Abra, but you asked earlier about how the infant gets the mother's flora.

Here's what I gathered from the book:

The mother has vaginal flora. This is populated with many of the same things as populate her gut. If she has good gut flora, she likely has good vaginal floral and vice versa. Vaginal flora is vital in protecting the vagina.

Anyhow, as the infant passes through the birth canal, this flora comes into contact with the mouth and it is this flora that first populates the infant's gut! How amazing is that? An infant has a sterile gut prior to birth, a blank slate so to speak. If born vaginally to a mother with healthy gut flora, the infant will have healthy gut flora. If breastfed, the gut flora will continue to flourish. If born via c-section and bottle fed, the gut flora make up will be completely different. To put in perspective... I was born via c-section and bottle fed. And I've had digestive/mood/attention issues my whole life.

Anyway, I'm sure that's just a very simple run down and probably Abra will be able to explain it better/further. And you'll see the whole chapter about it in the book. 

[birdhappy85]

Originally Posted by LunaLady 

Oh, and I know I'm not Abra, but you asked earlier about how the infant gets the mother's flora.

Here's what I gathered from the book:

The mother has vaginal flora. This is populated with many of the same things as populate her gut. If she has good gut flora, she likely has good vaginal floral and vice versa. Vaginal flora is vital in protecting the vagina.

Anyhow, as the infant passes through the birth canal, this flora comes into contact with the mouth and it is this flora that first populates the infant's gut! How amazing is that? An infant has a sterile gut prior to birth, a blank slate so to speak. If born vaginally to a mother with healthy gut flora, the infant will have healthy gut flora. If breastfed, the gut flora will continue to flourish. If born via c-section and bottle fed, the gut flora make up will be completely different. To put in perspective... I was born via c-section and bottle fed. And I've had digestive/mood/attention issues my whole life.

Anyway, I'm sure that's just a very simple run down and probably Abra will be able to explain it better/further. And you'll see the whole chapter about it in the book. 

Wow that is very interesting, Christina! My sisters and I were all born via c-section and bottlefed as well (though our mom claims she breastfed for at least a month or two with each of us... but I cannot see her EBF, that's for sure). I don't even want to get into the whole spectrum of health issues my siblings and I have had! Interestingly enough, though, mental health and eating disorders have been prevalent throughout my family. I don't want to make ANY assumptions here either because it's an unfortunate situation no matter how it came about, but my sister with the severe psych/eating disorders birthed her son vaginally but never nursed and had him on soy formula very early on... and he has autism. I've tried sharing this GAPS stuff with everyone in my family but nobody except my other sister out in California has even heard me out. It's really frustrating to feel like this could be a potential help to my nephew and his mommy both but she isn't able to take care of herself well enough to even look into this!  Hopefully someday...

[birdhappy85]

As for conventional vs. organic/grassfed beef bones... I'm trying to buy the best that I can but it's proving to be a challenge. I called the Outpost today and they were all sold out of bones until the end of next week. I drove to the way east side of Milwaukee to Whole Foods and they don't make any claims to their bones being organic or grassfed. I thought for sure I'd have luck there, but the butcher told me all they can say is that the bones are from animals with no added hormones or antibiotics. The other closest health food stores are too small to even carry bones. Trader Joe's will be opening near here in a few weeks. Maybe I'll have luck there. Otherwise I may look into US Wellness. I don't want huge shipping fees, though.

[LunaLady]

Wellness has free shipping!
you just pay $7.50 per order for the styrofoam cooler and ice packs. I order like 3-4 weeks of stuff at a time.

[birdhappy85]

Originally Posted by LunaLady 

Wellness has free shipping!
you just pay $7.50 per order for the styrofoam cooler and ice packs. I order like 3-4 weeks of stuff at a time.

Alright, I'm an easy sell. *browsing US Wellness as we speak* I could definitely get used to having my meats arrive at the door instead of lugging them from the grocery store in bulk like I tend to do... Speaking of... My brother - a vegetarian - was shaking his head at me when we went to Whole Foods yesterday. They have those baskets on wheels (like a suitcase) and I filled the top half overflowing with meats and bones, just wheeling it around the whole store. I probably had people wondering what I was making. Ha!

[birdhappy85]

Does anyone know if water kefir will still ferment just fine even if it's not kept on the warm side? We really just don't have a specific warm and dark spot in our house to store the jars in, so I'm hoping it'll still ferment ok by 48 hours in our 70-ish degrees F home. Abra, please share what you know!

So yeah, I'm psyched, I've got water kefir going now, plus my second batch of raw sauerkraut, and I have a ton of beef broth in the fridge. My GAPS book just arrived. Going to dive into that tomorrow. I'm turning nutty over this stuff. My friends are like, "Huh? Whaaaa? Fermenting what? Kefir? Wtf? 

[LunaLady]

Joanie, does your oven have a light? Ours doesn't because it doesn't have a window in the door, but ovens that have a window in the door often have a light you can turn on. At our old house that's how I made kombucha... I'd put my jars of kombucha in the oven with the light on and the oven door closed and that was enough heat to keep it warm.

At our house now we have a microwave over the stove (it's a microwave and fan/vent in one thing) and if I turn on the light for over the stove it stays warm INSIDE the microwave. This is how I thaw frozen meat and how I have fermented kombucha! Only thing I use the microwave for, now! 

[Abraisme]

Hey everyone, sorry I've been missing the last week or so. We have been without Internet and I'm still using my phone now which is slow.

Gut flora: I think Christina summed it up perfectly.

Joanie: I was getting plenty of grass fed soup bones around there from small farms. Check on Craigslist for Grassfed beef, then call them and let them know that you want A LOT of bones. I managed to get a steady stream of beef bones for about $2-$3lb. Also, I always leave my kefir at room temp around 70, it works fine. Be careful of oven lights, the one at my MILs house made my yogurt 120 degrees which ruined it.

I've been spending this last week trying to find new resources for our GAPS food. I found raw milk for $6 a gallon and raw butter for $5lb!!! It's awesome!! There are good farmers markets here too.

[LunaLady]

Wow, Abra! Those are some amazing prices on raw milk and butter!

[Abraisme]

How is everyone doing?  You're a few weeks in now Christina, how's it going for you guys?  

We are starting to get settled in (at my sisters house) and back into some routine with the diet.  We just introduced raw cucumber into my dh's diet, hopefully it will go well and he can start trying some fruit next.  He REALLY wants a banana!  Heh.  This week I tried coconut bars, date/almond bars and almond/zucchini bread.  All of the items are tasty and my kids and hubby are happy to gobble them up.  

How did your kraut and stock turn out Joanie?

[Paigekitten]

Can I play too?  I haven't been on Mothering for a while...

We are trying to ease into full GAPS but we keep having to add a few non-gaps legal things back into to make the budget stretch far enough.  I'm starting to feel a bit stuck for ideas lately.   I really like it though because when we cut out grains and sugars I don't have gallbladder attacks and my oldest has fewer meltdowns per day.

[Abraisme]

We get stuck eating a lot of stir-fry and soup.  I do try to make at least 1 non-soup meal a day, which is often something like chicken, steamed veggies and roasted squash.  We have been eating a lot of squash, as it's cheap and in season now.  

[LunaLady]

Hi all!

We are doing great. Still loving our soup. We did have an OOPS last weekend when we found ourselves in a situation where we were away from home much longer than anticipated and we were getting hungry/cranky. I packed Rhyko food, thankfully, but DH and I had to eat out. Can I just say... food from a restaurant is so, so tasteless! Like, all I could taste was the salt. 

We've been reeling a bit from that, and today was DH's birthday, so we decided to eat out seems how we knew we had to restart GAPS. Last night we ate at the Whole Foods hotbar... which doesn't make it 'okay' but the vast majority of their items are organic and local, so that's good.

Anyway.... we were three weeks into Intro, and we are restarting now. We had soup all day today and we are going to do soup the rest of this week and start with phase 2 on Monday. We'll see how we do, but I think we will be able to work through the phases quicker this time.

I'm bummed because I was SO over any cravings or wants or desires for 'bad stuff'. I didn't even WANT to eat out. Oh, well.

Still really loving the soup we're having, though! It's just so so so tasty! I made chili Monday and that was really good, too. Yum yum. I canned some tomato onion garlic sauce so that we will have BPA free stuff for making chili this winter.